A magazine is an ammunition storage and feeding device within, or attached to, a repeating firearm. The magazine functions by moving the cartridges stored in the magazine into a position where they may be chambered by the action of the firearm. Most magazines designed for use with a reciprocating bolt firearm utilize a set of feed lips which stops the vertical motion of the cartridges out of the magazine but allows one cartridge at a time to be pushed forward (stripped) out of the feed lips by the firearm's bolt into the chamber.
Some form of spring and follower combination is almost always used to feed cartridges to the lips, which can be located either in the magazine (most removable box magazines) or built into the firearm (fixed box magazines). In a single feed design, the top cartridge touches both lips and is commonly used in single column box magazines.
A box (or “stick”) magazine, the most popular type of magazine in modern rifles and handguns, stores cartridges in a straight or gently curved column, either one above the other or staggered zigzag fashion. As the firearm cycles, cartridges are moved to the top of the magazine by a follower driven by spring compression to either a single feed position or alternating feed positions. In most firearms, the magazine follower engages a slide-stop to hold the slide back and keep the firearm out of battery when the magazine is empty and all rounds have been fired. Box magazines may be integral to the firearm or removable.
A detachable box magazine is a self-contained mechanism capable of being loaded or unloaded while detached from the host firearm. They are inserted into a magazine well in the firearm receiver usually below the action, but occasionally positioned to the side or on top. When the magazine is empty, it can be detached from the firearm and replaced by another full magazine. This significantly speeds the process of reloading, allowing the operator quick access to ammunition. This type of magazine may be straight or curved, the curve being necessary if the firearm uses rimmed ammunition or ammunition with a tapered case.
Single stack magazines are inherently more reliable because they require less pressure to feed and apply limited friction on the rounds being fed into the firearm. They are also less prone to suffering from misalignment of the ammunition if a loaded magazine is dropped on the ground. However, conventional single stack magazines are still vulnerable to malfunction if the nose of a cartridge gets higher or lower than the chamber of the barrel when the cartridge is being fed into the firearm. Conventional single stack magazines can also experience rim lock. Rim lock is caused by the rims of improperly stacked cartridges impeding each other from feeding into the firearm. Rim lock occurs when the rim of the uppermost cartridge is positioned behind the rim of the shell immediately below. As a result, the uppermost shell cannot feed forward into the firearm, resulting in a jammed magazine.
Therefore, a need exists for a new and improved magazine with removable feed lip element that eliminates failure to feed events because of cartridge nose up and nose down malfunctions and rim lock. In this regard, the various embodiments of the present invention substantially fulfill at least some of these needs. In this respect, the magazine with removable feed lip element according to the present invention substantially departs from the conventional concepts and designs of the prior art, and in doing so provides an apparatus primarily developed for the purpose of preventing the cartridges from jamming from both nose up and nose down malfunctions and rim lock.